Towards a new subsidiarity principle: the EU influence in Public Sector and Pulic Administration reforms in Spain

Since 2010 an emergence of direct interventions by EU institutions in the area of public sector and public administration reforms is observable. Our attempt is to fill some gaps by contributing to the existent research via the... [ view full abstract ]

Since 2010 an emergence of direct interventions by EU institutions in the area of public sector and public administration reforms is observable. Our attempt is to fill some gaps by contributing to the existent research via the case-study of Spain covering from 2010 to 2015. That is why we define in our paper, the European Union as an interactive game of three levels. Firstly, is a game between Member States, the EU and the international system where the EU (agent) and the international system (structure) are interdependent and permanently interacting. Secondly, between the EU (structure) and Member States (agents). Thirdly, the interaction between Member States (agents) and the international system (structure). In terms of Spanish public sector and public administration reforms over the last few decades four major events have conditioned the reforms: (1) devolution process; (2) implementation of a welfare regime; (3) European Union integration and (4) the ongoing economic crisis. In this paper, we study the effects of the third and fourth events. In order to assess them, the following research question are addressed: how did the EU and IMF affect the Spanish central government decision-making about fiscal consolidation? And how budgetary decisions did affect public sector reforms? The empirical study is based on extensive document analysis of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the European Commission, and the IMF, records of the parliament sessions and transcripts of its committees’ meetings. In addition, in depth semi-structured interviews with officials from the Ministry of Economy, the ECB, the IMF and the European Commission were carried out. In this lapse of time the EU has relied in the following to persuade Spain to introduce reforms into the public sector and administration: (1) Adjustment measures through pressure comprised of formal procedures. It is based on policy coordination under SGP, and EDP strengthened under the European Semester; (2) Conditionality. We distinguished two kinds of policy conditionality. Explicit policy conditionality exemplified in the MoU and implicit conditionality epitomised during the Sovereign Debt Crisis; (3) Backroom diplomacy generally associated with informal negotiations used by the EU and the most powerful Member States to convince policymakers to introduce reforms proposed by the EU in order to address major challenges and problems; and (4) External federator agents: external pressure played by superpowers such as the United States to foster European integration via impulse and support to the European project in critical events. Nevertheless, because of Spanish status considered as a EU structural state, the EU considered Spain as the most efficient and effective structure for implementing measures of macroeconomic stabilisation such as the reduction of fiscal deficit and public debt. In other words, the government reinforced the power of the central government leading to an undercover re-centralisation of the country.